The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and
Security (BIS) published an interim final rule on 6 January 2020
imposing licensing requirements on certain artificial intelligence
software specially designed to automate the analysis of geospatial
imagery. Effective immediately, licenses are required for exports
and re-exports of such software to all countries, except Canada.
The deadline for submitting comments to BIS regarding the rule is 6
March 2020.
While this rule does not appear to be tied directly to BIS
efforts to impose controls on certain "emerging
technologies," we note that artificial intelligence was
identified by BIS as a category of "emerging technology"
that BIS was considering for additional controls, and therefore BIS
may impose controls on additional types of artificial intelligence
software of technology in the future.
